of people,
she must satisfy herself that they possessed a degree of intelligence
corresponding to her own and were capable of understanding her. And now,
when she emerged from her fits of brutishness, when she found her old
self and was born again, in diversion and pleasure, she must for her
enjoyment have kindred spirits of her own. She wanted men about her who
would make her laugh, noisy gayety, the spirituous wit that intoxicated
her with the wine that was poured into her glass. And thus it was that
she sank to the level of the rascally Bohemia of the common people,
uproarious, maddening, intoxicating, like all Bohemias: thus it was that
she fell to the lot of a Gautruche.

L

As Germinie was returning to the house one morning at daybreak, she
heard, from the shadows of the _porte-cochere_ as it closed behind her,
a voice cry: "Who's that?" She ran to the servants' staircase, but found
that she was pursued, and as she turned a corner on the landing the
concierge seized her. As soon as he recognized her, he said: "Oh! is it
you? excuse me; don't be frightened! What a giddy creature you are! It
surprises you to see me up so early, eh? It's on account of the thieving
that's going on these days in the cook's bedroom on the second.
Good-night to you! it's lucky for you I don't tell all I know."

A few days later Germinie learned through Adele that the husband of the
cook who had been robbed said that there was no need to look very far;
that the thief was in the house, and that he knew what he knew. Adele
added that it was making a good deal of talk in the street and that
there were plenty of people who would believe it and repeat it. Germinie
became very indignant and told her mistress all about it. Mademoiselle
was even more indignant than she, and, feeling personally outraged by
the insult, wrote instantly to the cook's mistress that she must put a
stop at once to the slanderous statements concerning a girl who had been
in her service twenty years, and for whom she would answer as for
herself. The cook was reprimanded. Her husband in his wrath talked
louder than ever. He made a great outcry and for several days filled the
house with his project of going to the commissioner of police and
calling upon him to question Germinie as to where she procured the money
to start the _cremiere's_ son in business, as to where she procured the
money to purchase a substitute for him, and how she paid the expenses of
the men